By the late 1980s, while virtuoso guitarist Jorgenson played for hit-making country group The Desert Rose Band, those letters were plentiful, and most often came from adult females inquiring about matters beyond music.

“This one was different,” Jorgenson said, recalling a letter he received more than 20 years ago, postmarked from West Virginia. “It was written in pencil, on notebook paper, talking about, ‘The guitar part you did on this song was cool.’ Plus, I’d never met anyone named ‘Paisley’ before.”

These days, the Paisley fellow — first name, Brad — says hearing the Desert Rose Band changed his life, and we know this because he has become one of country music’s biggest stars. Jorgenson gave him a Desert Rose-used guitar in 2004, at a party where Paisley celebrated selling five million albums filled with guitar licks that are indelibly influenced by Jorgenson’s chiming, twanging, chattering electric style.

On Monday, August 9, nearly two decades after Jorgenson left Desert Rose, he and the rest of the group’s original lineup (Chris Hillman, Herb Pedersen, Jay Dee Maness, Bill Bryson and Steve Duncan) will play a reunion concert at the Belcourt Theatre. On Tuesday the 10th, they’ll play the Grand Ole Opry. Neither show will be a celebration of anything approaching five million albums sold, as the band’s 10 Top 20 country hits from 1987 to 1990 did not spawn such high commerce.

What was spawned, though, was of musical significance. In his time with the California-based, Nashville-marketed Desert Rose Band, Jorgenson brought a guitar sensibility that remains much-imitated in Music City. Lead singer Chris Hillman — who had once been booed at the Grand Ole Opry as a member of shaggy rock-gone-country band The Byrds — helped connect the Nashville mainstream to the hard-charging west coast country-rock styles of The Byrds and another one of his earlier bands, the Flying Burrito Brothers.Continue reading →

Billy Bob Thornton had no idea Silverstein wrote poems and children’s stories, and drew cartoons for everyone from pre-schoolers to Playboy magazine readers.

“What an amazing cat he was,” said Thornton, the musician, actor and director whose Boxmasters band performs “Sylvia’s Mother” on Twistable, Turnable Man: A Musical Tribute To The Songs Of Shel Silverstein, released in early June.

“Growing up, I was a slow reader. I got headaches from it, and still do,” Thornton continued. “But I noticed on the back of a Dr. Hook album that Shel Silverstein wrote most of the songs on it. I started going, ‘This guy is cool.’ Years later, I saw a picture of him on one of my daughter’s books that he wrote, The Giving Tree, and it looks like a mug shot. Like a guy that just got through tearing somebody to pieces.”Continue reading →

But it's not just the strictly professional stuff that builds such a legend. He also kicked Jim Morrison out of a limousine, produced an album on Charles Manson and carried through on a tipsy promise to cremate the body of his pal Gram Parsons (the Parsons family wasn't hip to the idea, and Kaufman had to steal his friend's body to carry through with the whole deal).

Kaufman's exploits are detailed in his autobiography, Road Mangler Deluxe, though the book ends way before the story does.

Kaufman remains up for the journeying and available to any budget-wielding music act who would like to be ferried around by the guy Mick Jagger called an “Executive Nanny.” Short of that, he’ll happily accept birthday well-wishes from anyone who sees him gliding past on the Harley Davidson XL Sportster he recently acquired, “in the divorce. Not mine, some other loser’s.”

In the late 1980s, Nashville’s Nanci Griffith decided to record a live album for MCA Records at a most unlikely spot: A Houston, Texas club called Anderson Fair that seats fewer people than can sit in the first four rows of a country music arena show.

The product of artsy, community minded hippie-types, Anderson Fair was, and is, a club that fostered songs and performers. As a money-making endeavor, it’s a lousy operation. As a bridge between songs and audiences, it is a little masterpiece.

All this is newly explained in For The Sake of the Song, a documentary that makes its Nashville Film Festival debut Wednesday night at 7:15 p.m. and that will also be screened on Thursday at 2:15 p.m.

A few days after winning his first Grammy in 2005, Bill Miller stood in a bathroom in his room at a rural Iowa Super 8 motel, looking in the mirror.

Across his forehead, Miller saw the word “Victim!” The guest before Miller had apparently used some anti-fog solution and a cotton swab to write that on the mirror, in hopes of creeping someone out the next time the room was full of steam. It worked, for a minute.

Then the whole thing turned into an unintended blessing.

“It was like an Alfred Hitchcock movie at first,” said Miller, who is up for what would be his third Grammy on Sunday, Jan. 31: He’s nominated in the Native American music category for his Spirit Wind North album. “Then I used my finger and changed the word to ‘Victory.’ I realized I’d really had ‘Victim!’ written across my head for a long time. And so I changed it.”

It was that simple, though not that easy.

Miller had accomplished much since leaving Wisconsin’s Stockbridge-Munsee Reservation at age 18. He’d toured the world as a musician, gained notice as a visual artist and entertained audiences with humor and perspective in concert and during public speaking performances. He’d penned songs with Nanci Griffith, Kim Carnes, Michael Martin Murphey and others. He’d spent time on a major record label. And he’d become the first Nashvillian to win a Native American music Grammy.Continue reading →

For Nashvillians, the festival is an exceptional chance to appreciate some of the wealth of top-notch talent Music City has to offer — but it’s also a prime opportunity to see some gifted folks who aren’t always in our neck of the woods. Here are just a few of the can’t-miss acts performing this weekend.

After releasing four acclaimed solo albums in the ’70s and ’80s (as well as writing hits for the Eagles and Linda Ronstadt), JD Souther took a 25-year break from recording solo albums. The Nashville resident has finally broken the silence with If the World Was You, a timeless collection of tunes that marry elements of jazz, Latin and country with exquisite production and masterful scene setting.Playing: Fri., Sept. 18, 11 p.m., Mercy Lounge.

The Americana Music Festival and Conference (which includes Those Darlins, pictured) runs Sept. 16-19 at various Nashville venues; tickets: $45 for showcase wristband.

The folks behind the 2009 Americana Music Festival and Conference say they have “something for anyone who has a passion for music.” It’d be hard to argue that point. For the past 10 years, the Nashville music fest has celebrated the songwriters and performers who boil music down to its raw elements: lyrics, melody and unfettered emotion.

Still, the tunes can’t help but come with a little dressing, and that tends to skew toward the rootsy, rustic and rowdy. (Check out the Sept. 16 showcase at Mercy Lounge with Those Darlins and Dexateens for a good and ear-ringing example.)

While the Sept. 18 and Sept. 19 showcases may likely see the biggest crowds, there’s no shortage of big things going down before the weekend. Most notably, there’s the AMA Awards and Honors show at the Ryman, which will include appearances from Buddy Miller, John Prine and Nanci Griffith.

The festival runs Wed., Sept. 16 through Sat., Sept. 19; check www.americanamusic.org for show schedules/more information, or to buy a showcase wristband ($45).

The Americana Music Association named Jim Rooney as its Lifetime Achievement for Producer/Engineer award winner. He'll receive the award at the 8th Annual Americana Honors & Awards ceremony, set for Thurs., Sept. 17 at the Ryman Auditorium.

Rooney's production work has been integral in the development of Americana music, a genre loosely defined as music that is based on American roots music traditions.